What's the ultimate terminal emulator? // Warp vs Wave

In this video, I compare two incredible terminal programs, Warp and Wave Terminal, and discuss their features, pros, and cons. From licensing and privacy to command input and output, tabs and windows, editing files, SSH connections, AI features, themes, and customization, I cover it all. Find out which terminal app comes out on top and why.

References

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Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction
01:02 Licensing and Privacy
03:51 Input and Output handling
07:24 Tabs and Windows
08:42 Editing Files
10:32 SSH connections
13:08 AI features
15:51 Themes and Customizations
18:45 Additional Features in Warp
19:55 Conclusion

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[KnoxLively-jg]

Knox here, Head of Developer Relations at Wave, so glad you gave us a try!

In regards to your feedback about what you DONT like about Wave, we're addressing most, if not all, of this in upcoming releases. Namely around

* Lack of layout customization
* Lack of theming customization.
* Lack of prompt support

We will be adding:
* The ability to split panes, move panes, zoom/unzooming, drag to new windows, etc.
* More themes, ability to edit themes (with JSON support), more font support, set background images (possibly gifs/movies), opacity, and much more)
* Current dev builds of Wave support most, if not all, prompt customizations like PowerLevel10k, Starship, etc.

And so much more to come! Thanks again for the great review ❤.

[JoePesos]

Requiring an account/sign in for terminal is insane to me, that is the last place i want outsiders tracking. As far as tabs and splitting etc... i don't see these doing anything better than tmux which can run in any terminal. There are standalone programs that integrate and do all these things better (other than AI which i don't want), i guess these programs pack everything in one for those that don't want to be bothered with identifying separate tools.

[zerotheory]

Alacritty vs Kitty is where the war is, this is a side skirmish between neighbors.

[djaskfjkasd]

if warp wasn't collecting information it wouldn't require you to login

[xusougf]

directly switched to wave, since opensource is in my pov very important

[Pariah]

This is hilarious to think that a terminal emulator is restricting the options of Shell you can use. What a time to be alive :D

[aDaily]

No Terminal Wars here...because nobody is using these.
Trust me, I've been a Linux/Unix native since the 90's. I am deep in the community.
Nobody is using these. A terminal is for navigating the CLI. Why would anyone need AI for that? It's just an annoyance that gets in your way when youre trying to write your command.
And the fact you got to login to an account....lol. PLEASE. All this "Advanced AI Tech" and they don't even support ligatures! WILD!
That being said, i like that they way they look. They look very slick. And choosing a theme is just one click away. Very convenient. But thats the ONLY good thing. And one pro will not get me to switch.

[markmorati]

i clicked like because you respected my time by starting with the license first and didnt have to go further

[armynyus]

Ok I'm a boomer. Used st for a decade, now on Alacritty. But hey, I really gave one of those a try....
Like.. for 10 minutes.
What shall I say. It feels like.. here you have this high end beautiful racing bike. Pure and performant. You are the motor but it reacts instant to anything you do. You know every single screw of it, you know why it is there and even the color tone of it fits exactly with the overall appearance. Not a single fraction of an ounce of weight wasted, all has a meaning, all for pure performance....

And then ..this.
Like somebody took that racing bike, plus a ton of plastic and paint, and put it around that bike, in order to make it look like a ...freaking motor bike. A poor man's motor bike, since the engine is the same but all sort of fluff around it.
Well. Not my cup of tea - but hey, who am i.

[ghlvubj]

Signing in to use a terminal misses the point completely. This is now in the area of people who like to work ON their computer instead of WITH.

I got stuff to do; another sign on is out of the question.

[michaelhess]

I love warp, I've tried most others mentioned here, none work as well with my flow. I won't begrudge anyone for using any of these!

[LinuxIsBetter]

6:20 What kind of Linux user describes using mouse instead of keyboard as a feature?

[mechwarrior]

electron based terminals will always be a passing fad

[dinkledorf]

"overkill" doesn't even begin to describe it.

[arctic_line]

So often the features listed for both I was going "why would I want that to be in the terminal?"
For example, autocomplete _really_ should be handled by the program that actual runs the commands, which is the shell, and shouldn't be done at the terminal level.
And even for the times that I do think it could be a useful terminal feature, I could just do the same in Emacs with vterm to get even better integration with my editing environment. All without needing an online account or have to deal with an AI in a place I really don't need one.
Basically, to me a terminal should just be a way to interact with stdin and stdout, maybe looking pretty if I can make it, so I just use Alacritty as my go-to and vterm if I need something integrated with my Emacs session (or wanna leverage any snippets I come up with that can't just be shell functions or scripts).

[EliSmith]

So much of this should be handled by the shell, not the terminal emulator

[error]

A close source terminal is a no go for anyone with common sense.

[jrdemasi]

Things a terminal doesn't need: AI.

[AngriestEwok]

You lost me at closed source. To me, that means: hand over all my personal data to a foreign and potentially hostile entity I have no reason to trust.

[jnyams]

I’m a sysadmin and initially thought I might find an alternative for my iTerm2 here but instead im disgusted by almost every feature…
Those „terminals“ feel like a vscode skin to me